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⠀There were cracks in the walls. Little divots, and bumps. She could feel them beneath her fingers as she traced her hands along the wall behind her. That much she knew.
⠀There was little light within the small chamber, filtered in through thick slats pressed into the old small window. She could barely make out the architecture of the room, so had resorted to running her limbs along the expanse of this cavity. It was small, and it was stale. That much she knew.
⠀Whatever entity had designed her collar, had taken into account the muscles of her neck. They had meticulously shaped it in a way that felt inescapable because it was. She doesn't exactly remember how long ago they had put it on her, or what satisfaction they would get out of seeing it strapped tightly to her windpipe, all she knew was prying it off with her dry fingers was not an option. Trying to do so would give the device an eighty-seven percent chance of killing her... at least that's what they had told her.
⠀She had experienced its paralysing shockwave through her entire body multiple times by now that she dreaded to think what it would be like to give it that chance to kill her. The electricity embedded throughout her bones every time she talked out of turn, or at some points, didn't talk enough.
⠀Dalilah Vane knew all this, but it didn't stop her from pressing her heated forehead to the ground beneath her and asking "If I asked you so, would you tell me who I am?"
⠀Almost kneeling to whatever in these worlds controlled the winds, and made fire rise, and doing all she could do with her time alone — ask the questions she had been asking for most of her life.
⠀"I don't know who I am."
⠀The dust from the floor had gathered in the corner of her eyes, and every now and then she had to scrub at them with her wrists. It had matted into her light tawny hair, and she was sure some parts of it had clumped together into masses that could only be cut out.
⠀She had gone from being a display of pure prowess, as it was expected of her, to a heaping pile of bones. She once had a uniform. That much she knew.
⠀Dalilah found that the memories of her second life were extremely discomforting when in previous times of transition she shut out all that used to make her. Whatever dust and clay had formed together to make the new Dalilah would not be tainted by the traits she had to abandon to survive.
⠀That Dalilah was concise, this Dalilah had yet to find out what made her.
⠀"I don't know who I am."
━━━━━━━━━━
⠀"It seems your information is wrong," The client looked upon the small display of the young woman, her skin deathly pale and quivering under his eyes. "Again." His voice held an unknown accent, and a vibration of regalness that he seemingly didn't inherit but desired all the same. The only evidence of his power to her was his distinguished mannerisms, and the large circular pendant he wore on his chest.
